The Latest from Boing Boing |  |
- Hugo Award nominations are open
- HOWTO make toys from tin cans (ebook)
- Stop motion snow-skeleton video
- Visualizing the deletion process on Wikipedia
- Vintage comic book ads
- Sue Townsend talks Adrian Mole with the Guardian book-club
- Restricting sale of cold medicine creates lucrative black market
- Video of cars being washed away in flash flood in Queensland, Australia
- What's causing the mysterious mass animal die-offs? Buttsecks.
- NASA: ISS Crew in space observe national moment of silence
- Improv Everywhere No Pants Subway Ride 2011: Big Photo Gallery (dubiously SFW)
- R.I.P. Vader (Boing Boing Flickr Pool)
- SSSCat Cat Training Aid
- Wikileaks: LA Times editorial on "inhumane imprisonment" of Bradley Manning
- Rice Krispiehenge
- Jim Woodring's giant ink pen unveiled
- Water Sculpture movie
- Meditating cats balance tangerines
- How To: Make a B-Boy Abe Lincoln out of a $5 Bill
- Howard Lerner's rocket baby assemblage
- More gig posters for scientists
- Scientists pick apart list of nonsense
- Former friend on Jared Lee Loughner's beliefs and motivations
- Time traveling cigarette snatchers rewrite history
- Read the journalism that exposed MMR vaccine/autism fraud
- Why you can't do science with just any old mouse
- Self-experimentation: Workout edition
| Hugo Award nominations are open Posted: 11 Jan 2011 05:18 AM PST The Hugo Award nominations are now open; attendees at last year's World Science Fiction Convention in Melbourne or next year's in Reno are eligible to nominate. I usually wait until the annual Locus List of notable publications to help me make my choices and jog my memory, but in case you're wondering, yes, indeed, I do have some items eligible for this year's ballot: * Novel: For the Win (Tor, 2010) |
| HOWTO make toys from tin cans (ebook) Posted: 11 Jan 2011 05:09 AM PST  "How to make tin can toys" is a $9.95 ebook version of an old book explaining the fabrication of all manner of toys from tin cans. Judging from the table of contents, it covers a lot of basics, from soldering to tool-use, and has projects for making cars, trucks, boats, trains, as well as several mechanical toys, including a steam turbine and boiler. How to make tin can toys (via Making Light)   |
| Stop motion snow-skeleton video Posted: 11 Jan 2011 05:03 AM PST This little stop-motion video cleverly uses a sewer-grate for the rib-cage of a snow-skeleton whose heart yearns for freedom. street art (cold as ice) (via Neatorama)   |
| Visualizing the deletion process on Wikipedia Posted: 11 Jan 2011 03:06 AM PST  David Weinberger sez, "Notabilia has visualized the hundred longest discussion threads at Wikipedia that resulted in the deletion of an article and the hundred that did not. The visualized threads take on shapes depending on whether the discussion was controversial, swinging, or unanimous. For those whose brains can process visualized information (as mine cannot), you will undoubtedly learn much. For the rest of us: Oooooh, pretty! They also have analyzed data using words. E.g., Delete decisions tend to be unanimous." Visualizing Deletion Discussions on Wikipedia (Thanks, DavidJoho, via Submitterator!)   |
| Posted: 11 Jan 2011 03:03 AM PST  The Comic Book Resources blog hosts this archive of scanned vintage comic-book ads, each more delightful than the last. I Saw It Advertised One Day Archive (via Vintage Ads)
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| Sue Townsend talks Adrian Mole with the Guardian book-club Posted: 11 Jan 2011 02:58 AM PST Sue Townsend is featured in this week's Guardian book club podcast, discussing her first novel, the classic Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4, one of my favorite books of all time (I'm practically the same age as Adrian, and have read every one of the books as they came out). Townsend is as engaging and funny as you'd expect, and is dead interesting on the subject of literature and the secret history of the Mole books. Sue Townsend meets the Guardian book club   |
| Restricting sale of cold medicine creates lucrative black market Posted: 10 Jan 2011 10:23 PM PST The tracking system laws that make it inconvenient to buy cold medicine have not slowed down the meth trade one bit. In fact, they've created a new "sub-criminal culture," says an agent with the DEA. The practice has not only failed to curb the meth trade, which is growing again after a brief decline. It also created a vast and highly lucrative market for profiteers to buy over-the-counter pills and sell them to meth producers at a huge markup.Radley Balko of Reason says: "Meth use was also up 34 percent in 2009. So the new laws are inconveniencing law-abiding people who want to treat cold and allergy symptoms, have had either zero or a positive effect on meth use, have lured new people into the meth trade, and have created a bigger market for smuggling meth and meth ingredients into the country from Mexico." This is a big win for law enforcement and the prison industry. Look for even more restrictive cold medicine laws in the future. |
| Video of cars being washed away in flash flood in Queensland, Australia Posted: 10 Jan 2011 09:51 PM PST Whitelightbringer writes: Amazing footage of East Creek near Chalk Drive / Chalk Lane rising and washing away lots of cars during Flash Flood in Toowoomba on Monday 10 January 2011. This is some of the best footage I have seen of the Flood and was taken from the second floor of our office which backs onto Chalk Lane. It shows just how fast the creek turned into a torrent and quickly flooded Chalk Drive and Chalk Lane.Video Link   |
| What's causing the mysterious mass animal die-offs? Buttsecks. Posted: 10 Jan 2011 07:45 PM PST [Video Link] Cindy Jacobs, a "respected prophet," says birds and fish may be dying off en masse because of the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. In other words: buttsecks kills. "From Pokemon cards and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, to Marilyn Manson and psychic hotlines, this nation is under siege," she warns in her new book. (via James Urbaniak)
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| NASA: ISS Crew in space observe national moment of silence Posted: 10 Jan 2011 07:08 PM PST [Video Link]
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| Improv Everywhere No Pants Subway Ride 2011: Big Photo Gallery (dubiously SFW) Posted: 10 Jan 2011 06:53 PM PST  The 10th Annual No Pants Subway Ride took place on Sunday, January 9, 2011, with 3,500 participants in New York City and thousands more in 50 cities across the world. The event is organized by Improv Everywhere, and involves participants who strip down to their underwear as they go about their normal routine. Above and below, photos from NYC and elsewhere.
A man in his underwear takes part in the 10th Annual No Pants Subway Ride in New York City January 9, 2011. (REUTERS/Jessica Rinaldi) Pantsless subway buskers, New York City. (REUTERS/Jessica Rinaldi)
People who took part in the 10th Annual No Pants Subway Ride dance in a window of a department store in New York City January 9, 2011. (REUTERS/Jessica Rinaldi)
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| R.I.P. Vader (Boing Boing Flickr Pool) Posted: 10 Jan 2011 06:12 PM PST  Photograph contributed to the Boing Boing Flickr Pool by BB reader DaynaT. |
| Posted: 10 Jan 2011 01:48 PM PST  This terrific product is perfect for dealing with minor stubborn behavior in your cat. I didn't like our cat going up on the counter behind our kitchen sink to look out the window, but every time I went outside, there she was laughing at me. I tried many different deterrents, but she was like the Borg from Star Trek. She would just adapt. SSSCat solved the problem. SSSCat is a can of compressed air (like for cleaning the dust out of your keyboard), but with a motion sensor that sprays when the cat gets near. It doesn't harm or hurt the cat in any way, but it does condition them to avoid the area where the SSSCat has been. We've also used it outside of our bedroom door to prevent the cat from persistently meowing and jumping up at the door in the wee hours of the morning. The can of compressed air the unit comes with is about half the capacity of the cans you get for dusting keyboards. After it ran out, I found that I could use the keyboard duster cans. Just popped the trigger off the keyboard duster and attached the SSSCat nozzle. Jean Luc Picard could have used this against the Borg. They never would have figured it out. [Note: Make sure you pick up four AAA batteries as they are sold separately. -- OH] -- Bill Dorfmann SSSCat Cat Training Aid $22 Comment on this at Cool Tools. Or, submit a tool!  |
| Wikileaks: LA Times editorial on "inhumane imprisonment" of Bradley Manning Posted: 10 Jan 2011 06:16 PM PST A surprisingly strong editorial from the Los Angeles Times on the conditions under which alleged Wikileaks source Pfc. Bradley Manning is being held: "Regardless of one's view of his alleged conduct, the conditions under which he is being held are indefensible."   |
| Posted: 10 Jan 2011 01:06 PM PST  A photograph contributed to the Boing Boing Flickr Pool by BB reader Laser Bread, aka Brock Davis, who lives in Minneapolis, MN. |
| Jim Woodring's giant ink pen unveiled Posted: 10 Jan 2011 12:27 PM PST  Our pal and frequent guest blogger Glenn Fleishman attended the unveiling ceremony of Jim Woodring's 7 foot tall ink pen. Glenn provided this brief account of the event: It was a hoot.The experiment was a mixed success. Jim was pretty game: he wanted to share the agony and ecstasy of the first time. Control is difficult, and he'll need to mess with ink formulations more. Over a couple hours, he clearly mastered it, but the pen body weighs 25 pounds -- it's a real load.Don't miss Glenn's other photographs of the Nibbus Maximus event, which Glenn posted on his Flickr stream.   |
| Posted: 10 Jan 2011 12:13 PM PST Artist Shinichi Maruyama created this magical and elegant Water Sculpture Movie. |
| Meditating cats balance tangerines Posted: 10 Jan 2011 12:09 PM PST [Video Link] |
| How To: Make a B-Boy Abe Lincoln out of a $5 Bill Posted: 10 Jan 2011 11:20 AM PST  via i love charts |
| Howard Lerner's rocket baby assemblage Posted: 10 Jan 2011 11:06 AM PST   Found object sculptor Howard Lerner created this strange and wonderful assemblage, titled "Adam Rocket." Howard says that it's "about our celestial 'beginnings.'" Lerner's approach is to use "common remnants of our civilization to create human size constructions using a Biblical narrative." Amazing work. Howard Lerner Art
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| More gig posters for scientists Posted: 10 Jan 2011 10:53 AM PST  Here is the latest rock poster-inspired flier for a science lecture at the UNC Chapel Hill Biology Department. Make sure you check out all of them. They're hand screenprinted by The Merch, a Chapel Hill design group "influenced by skateboard culture, underground music, and contemporary design.""Gig Posters for Scientists"
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| Scientists pick apart list of nonsense Posted: 10 Jan 2011 10:40 AM PST RealClimate.org has a great piece by Michael Tobis and Scott Mandia which is going to be incredibly useful for one of the classes I teach (Global Issues in the Arts and Sciences), and to be honest, I totally think it's also worth a look by anyone interested in climate change affairs. By focusing on a recent opinion piece published by Larry Bell at Forbes, it nicely broaches two areas: 1) it illustrates a few of the tactics that climate denialists use when they debate their case, and (2) it picks apart many of the most recent and most common "scientific" arguments used against the case for immediate policy action to mitigate climate change. Bell uses the key technique that denialists use in debates, dubbed by Eugenie Scott the "Gish gallop", named after a master of the style, anti-evolutionist Duane Gish. The Gish gallop raises a barrage of obscure and marginal facts and fabrications that appear at first glance to cast doubt on the entire edifice under attack, but which on closer examination do no such thing. In real-time debates the number of particularities raised is sure to catch the opponent off guard; this is why challenges to such debates are often raised by enemies of science. Little or no knowledge of a holistic view of any given science is needed to construct such scattershot attacks.To me, the picking apart of the various assertions that Bell presents is the best part. Not only does it show how easy it is to form such careless arguments, but it also provides a highly readable science primer on some of the more recent research in climatology, all in an effort to inform on the current trends in cyclonic activity, ocean cooling, sea levels, polar snow fall, ice melting, etc. The net effect is that it becomes clear that the Forbes article is largely nonsense from a scientific point of view (since Tobis and Mandia do point out the one assertion where Bell may have a valid argument), full of polemic where language is spun accordingly, and really a disheartening example of poor press. Anyway, great fodder for a class where discussing these sorts of things (including an opportunity to also critique Tobis and Mandia's piece) is key. Now, all I need is to find an article with an opposing view that is both responsibly written and uses the same lens of robust research data - something tells me that might be a little trickier... Forbes' rich list of nonsense   |
| Former friend on Jared Lee Loughner's beliefs and motivations Posted: 10 Jan 2011 02:40 PM PST Mother Jones has a profile of alleged gunman Jared Lee Loughner that paints Loughner as a man driven less by any particular political ideology than by paranoia, feelings of superiority, an obsession with lucid dreaming, and a desire to force other people to "wake up". A former friend says that Loughner decided Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was a "fake" when she didn't adequately answer his question—"What is government if words have no meaning?"—at a 2007 open forum. The part about words having no meaning apparently came from Loughner's lucid-dream related theories about the unreality of the physical world. He believed that if the real world wasn't real, then nothing said there was real either.   |
| Time traveling cigarette snatchers rewrite history Posted: 10 Jan 2011 10:08 AM PST  "Let's sweeten history by pretending cigarettes didn't exist." (Also -- they should have hired R. Crumb to do the Robert Johnson illo.) |
| Read the journalism that exposed MMR vaccine/autism fraud Posted: 10 Jan 2011 09:21 AM PST Last week, editors of the medical journal BMJ declared Andrew Wakefield's 1998 Lancet paper linking autism to the MMR vaccine to be not just incorrect, but actively fraudulent. The research that led many parents to avoid MMR vaccination for their children (and, subsequently, led to the resurgence of measles, mumps, and rubella outbreaks, including several deaths) turned out to include information falsified to support a result chosen before the study began, by a researcher who was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to get that desired result. The scam was exposed by journalist Brian Deer, and now, you can read the full text of Deer's expose online in BMJ. This story has been covered extensively—including here at BoingBoing, in a great post by Andrea—but it's really worth reading Deer's original work, which is deeply researched, well sourced, and horrifying in its revelations. The BMJ editors' opinion came after Deer's work was put through the same peer-review process usually reserved for scientific research, and after Britain's General Medical Council published the full report that led them to ban Wakefield from practicing medicine in the UK last year. It's worth noting that, despite all of this, Wakefield continues to push the idea that MMR vaccine causes autism. His latest targets: Minnesota's community of Somali immigrants. This group has higher diagnosed autism rates than the general population and, because they come from a country with little or no health care system, there's no way to compare this to Somalis living in Somalia. (In fact, many Somalis believe there is no autism in Somalia at all, although researchers call that conclusion unlikely and unfounded.) This is clearly a community that needs help and needs research. (In fact, the CDC and NIH are already studying the situation). But Wakefield is not the guy who should be doing it. Unfortunately, as long as there are parents looking for answers, it seems that Wakefield will be there, spreading misinformation.   |
| Why you can't do science with just any old mouse Posted: 10 Jan 2011 08:46 AM PST  Laboratory mice are not the same creatures you'll find living in your wall or a farm field. Instead, they are highly specialized. Whether born of high-tech genetic manipulation or good, old-fashioned selective breeding, each type of mouse—and there are thousands in the catalogs—is designed to test specific types of questions. Use the wrong mouse, and your data will be worthless. Or, at least, your conclusions will be incorrect. That's what happened recently, when the authors of a 2006 paper in the Journal of Immunology retracted their work after belatedly realizing that it was based on studies done with the wrong mouse. They'd meant to buy a mouse that lacked a specific gene. Instead, thanks to a simple typo, they'd ended up with mice that lacked that gene—and a key chemical receptor in its cells, which changed the outcome of the research. I've written a little about the strange world of laboratory mice, both here, and in mental_floss. Want more? There's a Wired story by Gary Wolfe that will interest you, as well. (Via Alexandra Witze)   |
| Self-experimentation: Workout edition Posted: 10 Jan 2011 10:39 AM PST  Some people don't use soap. Other people eschew alarm clocks or cooking utensils. Over on the Obesity Panacea blog, Peter Janiszewski recently decided to give up the 21st century sedentary lifestyle. That may not seem like a big deal, especially to those of us who exercise regularly, enjoy going for walks, and are, generally, not complete couch-potatoes. But, Janiszewski, who has a PhD in clinical exercise physiology, says that recent research is showing that even someone who visits the gym every day can still be living a sedentary life, especially if their job requires them to sit at a desk for hours every day. If you spend most of the day seated, he says, you could still end up with some negative health impacts, even if you do exercise in the morning. That describes me pretty well. And it described Janiszewski, too.
Janiszewski hasn't been at this experiment for very long, but he says he'll be posting updates. In the meantime, you can read the five-part series his blogging partner Travis Saunders wrote about the health impacts of sedentary lifestyles: •Part 1: Not just the lack of physical activity Mark also recently posted about a different article Travis Saunders wrote on this same subject. Image: Not my desk. That's way too clean. Instead, it belongs to and was photographed by Flickr user jimw. Used via CC   |
She explains that much of Adrian's character is based on her own experience as a "secret" writer for years, put off from going public with her work by a disapproving first husband. Her second husband proved much more encouraging, and after a creative writing playwriting course at a Leicester theatre, Adrian was born after an actor asked for an audition piece. 
Participants in Zurich ride a tram, sans culottes. (REUTERS/Christian Hartmann)
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